This piece began as the opening of The Return of the Queen — and for a long time, I thought it would stay there. But my long-suffering development editor, Sarah, gently pointed out that for anyone who has already read Fragments of Silk, it works more as a recap than a revelation. She was right.
What it actually is, I came to realise, is something else entirely: an attempt to step fully into Ria's heart and tell her story from the inside — the grief of a mother whose child was taken, carried silently across a thousand years, hidden beneath the wonder and mystery he and Alfur experience together in Book One. We never see this side of Ria in Fragments of Silk, because we are always with Alfur, never with her.
So rather than cut it, I wanted to give it a home of its own. This is Ria, in her own words, remembering Angus — and finding, at last, his descendant standing at her door.
There was a time, a thousand years ago, when Alfie’s forebear, innocent of his father’s wickedness, had lain inside me. When he was born, I named him Angus, a baby destined to lead his family. I can remember his beautiful face, his tiny hands, perfect in every way, grasping at me, his almond-coloured eyes absorbed in the joy of sucking at my left breast close to my heart.
Who can know a mother’s love and the desolation of her loss when her child is taken? It was not just my milk that flowed so long ago, but my love, my eternal love, love that would carry me across an ocean of time to find him and to be with him again.
What an appetite Angus had. He would be big in every way; I knew that, and I loved him. Then, faced with the evil and the violence of men, I was forced to return alone to my retreat in the high mountains and in my grief, leave him to his destiny. Since then, I thought of him through every turn of the earth and every passage of the seasons, hoping he would return. Any touch of my left breast, the one where he started and the one where he finished, would light my fire and my passion.
Then, one day, just over a year ago, Alfie had walked into my cottage. I had known for a hundred years that one day he would come; many generations had passed; Angus had been the first and Alfie was now the last of my line. Only weeks before, blessed Fogarty, the keeper of the boots, had sold him the boots that brought him to my door. Through the flame dividing his world from mine, Fogarty had described him and told me when he would visit Skye again.
Now he was here. Playing my flute had caught his attention, and hearing his footsteps approach, I called to him, inviting him in, my fairy heart pounding with joy and hope.
He stooped to enter, and then he looked at me, and I knew it was him. Angus was reborn. I had found him. He was straight and tall, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, just as I had imagined my child, born a thousand years before, would grow to be. He also had a shock of dark brown hair and a voice of just the same colour.
As he approached, I sensed wariness, but there were strength and resolution, too; I could see it in the set of his jaw. He was dressed for the hills, but as he stooped to remove his boots, I stopped him, calling him over to sit with me by the fire.
His restless eyes scanned the room. Was he fearful of me or fearful of this place? It was of me, and I had a sense of a mother’s hand, cruel and unforgiving. There was attraction, but wariness too. He sat, his body closed and his arms folded until I gave him some tea. And all the while he held me with his eyes—they were Angus’s eyes—eyes that I hoped would soon shine with the love of his ancestor. He wanted to know about his boots. Boots I had taken from the bootmaker’s hands a century before, strong boots with their red laces and in their depths possessing the magic of the ages.
We then talked about me, and at first, he doubted, but I knew—no, I hoped—with all the passion of my fairy heart that he would be mine. Before we parted, I gave him a glimpse of the eternal, and he promised he would return at the next spring equinox—a promise I knew he would keep. After a thousand years of waiting, I had found him, my alpha and my omega, descendant of Angus, his forebear, the first chief of the Leod.
And with that I slept, safe in possessing and being possessed by Alfie. At long last, a queen in my fortress of love.